Section 1. Start a New Project

1. Start a New Project

SEE ALSO

2 Customize Your Workspace

3 Nest Your Panels to Save Desktop Space

4 About Video Capture

14 Add Media with the Adobe Media Downloader

Chapter 1 provided enough information for you to start a video project. You might want to get together all the images and clips you will be using to create your video masterpiece. It never hurts to be organized. The more organized you are for a project, the more time you will have to spend on future projects (or other things). In this task, you'll learn how to start a new project in Premiere Elements and give it a name and storage location on your computer.

TIPS

Put together a storyboard, just like the pros. You can download free storyboards and get tips on how to use them; just search for storyboard on the Internet. A storyboard is a panel, or series of panels, on which a set of sketches is consecutively arranged depicting the important changes of scene and action in a series of shots (as for a film, television show, or commercial).

Put together a list of images, video clips, and tapes to capture (and place them in their own folder on your computer, with a label such as Next Project). Add thoughts on transitions that you might like to use and what menu might look good for this project. The more you do on the front end, the easier it will be when you start putting your video project together in Premiere Elements.

1.	Start Premiere Elements Double-click the Premiere Elements shortcut icon on your desktop or go to the Start menu and choose Premiere Elements. Premiere Elements launches and the splash screen appears.
2.	Select New Project From the splash screen, click the New Project icon. The New Project dialog opens. 1. Start a New Project
3.	Name Your Project In the dialog box that appears, you can either enter a new name or leave the default name untitled. You also want to specify an appropriate Save In locationthis is where Premiere Elements will save the files for this project. TIP Provide a project name that is descriptive and meaningful for your new project. If you have a second internal hard drive or an external USB 2.0 drive, it is best to use it for storing all your video and project files. If you can designate a second drive solely for video, you will speed up the processes and make your life a whole lot easier. Whatever drive you use, be sure to run the Windows Defragmentation utility on a regular basis. Digital video production software of all kinds runs best on a clean, well-organized drive. When you've provided a project name and specified a storage location, click OK. The Premiere Elements workspace appears, with the new, blank project loaded.
4.	See Your New Project on the Splash Screen The next time you visit the splash screen (when you launch Premiere Elements), your new project will appear in the list of recent projects.

NOTE

If you've already launched Premiere Elements, you can still access your existing projects. From the main menu, select File, Open Project or File, Open Recent Project. You can also return to the splash screen by selecting File, Close.